Trust No One

The rock guitarist’s solo project is normally best kept at several arms length; but then again Dave Navarro is not your average string twanger. A founder member of Jane’s Addiction, later to join Red Hot Chilli Peppers and work with Guns N’ Roses and Nine Inch Nails, he’s also an author, artist and actor.

Trust No One is an almost cathartic work, dealing with the darker side of his life –

including the murder of his mother

(detailed to powerful effect on ‘Mourning Son’).

Its ten tracks are thus a little uncomfortable going, giving the listener a feeling of intrusion into the artist’s psyche but Navarro has drawn on his demons to produce some, at times, inspiring music. With a cast list that includes Matt Chamberlain, Holly Palmer, Danny Saber and Twiggy Ramirez, the album is constantly inventive and light on guitar histrionics, Navarro more often not concentrating on acoustic rather than electric.

While there’s nothing really here to suggest that on his own he can become a major league player, if Trust No One is an album that Navarro needed to make then we, the wider audience, have profited from his personal exorcism.